The Revenants

by Tepper, Sheri S

  There were proofs of this attitude more subtle than the general disregard. In Anisfale there were certain rituals which were provided for the people of the moors at various stages in their lives. There were naming ceremonies and dedication ceremonies, to say nothing of those ceremonies of invocation and protection which should have been conducted for her when she became a woman. Perhaps they thought, if they thought, that she was not a woman, for women marry and bear children, things Leona could never do, a number squared on both sides of the bed and therefore impossibly unlucky. The ceremonies invested the family with the life of each member, each member with the needs of the family. But Leona was unlucky; she could require nothing, contribute nothing.

  They might have done better to remember why the ceremonies had originated. They were not only pleasant customs, gifts to be given as the people chose and thought proper, but were great and potent weapons with which the families had long defended themselves against an un-remembered danger. Who, hearing the Act of Protection chanted, ‘Forfend the beast and the demon from our humanity’ would have suspected that the words were anything but metaphorical?

  The ceremonies were done for each member of the family, each of the people of Anisfale at the proper time, except for Leona. Those who administered the ceremonies did not think of it, did not notice the exclusion. Leona herself did not think of it. She went on bearing her daily life and rejoicing in Fabla’s company.

  There came an end to their joy. Fabla was a third daughter, fifth child, and she had a family-brother, Deek-moth. The time came when Deekmoth, as the custom was, chose a wife from another clan and offered Fabla in exchange to Linnos, first child, first son – no double numbers there. Fabla cried that she was not willing, but she was strong and bright-haired, fair of feature and soft of voice. Willing or no, she was suitable to exchange for the sister of Linnos and become Linnos’s wife. Willing or no she was exchanged and sent away, across the muted moors and into the twilight of the north. Thereafter, she and Leona might meet at festivals or funerals.

  Since it was not considered important that wives enjoy their husbands’ attentions, it was not remarked that Fabla detested the attentions of Linnos. She conceived in good time and bore a son which was, of course, a first of a first on the father’s side and therefore counted a throwaway if it did not survive. Fabla should have recovered in a few months and conceived promptly again.

  But she did not. She did not recover from the weakness of birthing but lingered, weakening gradually, between half life and half death, unwilling either to live or to die, unwilling to hold the child or see it gone, unwilling to cry or cease from crying. The women who assisted at birthings did not know what to do. The doctor who was sent for confessed himself at a loss. At last, Linnos sought to return Fabla to her brother, but since this would have necessitated the return of Linnos’s sister, Deekmoth was unwilling. Linnos blustered and threatened. He could not take another wife for several years; he could not return Fabla; he could get no good of her while she lay half dead. Finally he sent to the oracle at Stonycroft and was gifted with the words of that old man.

  ‘She may hang as she is between life and death for many years,’ said the oracle, ‘until someone finds and brings the Vessel of Healing of the Founding Doctor, which would certainly bring her back to living. The oracle did not know where the Vessel might be found.

  Linnos said he might go inquire about it after shearing, if he found time. Meanwhile, he found a plump companion at the tavern in Ne’rdale and left Fabla to the care of an ancient crone. And all this time Leona suffered as though it had been she who bore and was ill and could not recover. Her face grew gaunt and lined and her eyes deep-set, and there was not an hour of any day in which she did not long for Fabla. She begged that she might be let go to Fabla, but they would not let her. At last she simply went, without their permission.

  So it was that she wandered the high moor one day in her sixteenth year as the sun dropped westerly and the clouds lifted into a high roof above a world washed clean by rain. The sun fell upon her from the west beneath the cloud as the moon rose in the east behind a copse of dark trees, and her human form dropped from her as though she had shed a loose garment. No one was there to see, except Leona, what shape came upon her. Leona saw, in the reflection of a quiet ppol. No one was there to hear what sound she cried, except Leona, and she heard in the echoes that came back from the distant peaks, brazen and plangent. No one knew what had happened, except for a sheep which had lain in the heather near her and which was now a riven corpse which stared blindly at the wild green under the westering sun. Talons had pierced it through, and it had died without a sound. No one knew except Leona. She saw what she had become and understood it without words to name it or words to reason it in.

  She waited until the sun sank and the moon rose high to ride in a wrack of cloud. She washed herself in the cold water, returned to human form, and went on to the north.

  She went to Fabla’s side and wept there until Linnos came and drove her away, saying that he would not feed two women of her kindred to lie about his sted, and moan. Leona went away dry-eyed. Fabla had not known her.

  She did not return to her family. She told one of the children that she would go seek the Vessel for Fabla’s sake, but the people scarce remarked at this for a greater news held them to their gossip. Fabla’s husband, Linnos, was gone – disappeared. He had gone out in the night to see what thing caused a racket among the sheep, and he had never returned. They found his body on the moor, much later, riven as though by beasts or the great birds of the cliffs. They wondered much at that.

  But at the fact Leona was gone? That all trace of her had been removed from the house she had tenanted? That her lace by the cooking fire was empty, her bed space vacant, er voice missing? Did anyone wonder at that?

  CHAPTER SIX

  MEDLO

  Years 1163-1165

  East of the Sea Desert lie the broad plains of the cattle herders, rolling grasslands which stretch from horizon to horizon, under calm skies or lowering, the blown grass a sea of green or tan, depending upon the season. In the long summer it is a dry land, and the cities of the plain are full of dust and the heat which beats from high enclave walls and the rasping cry of cicadas from the ragged grey trees. Dry and weary are such cities as Jassus, or Dierno, or Das.

  In a dismal orbansa inn in the city of Das, Medlo, the scion of Rhees, woke one morning the worse for drink and dream. He had been given some unidentified substance to chew, or smell, he forgot which, in a spirit either of camaraderie or malice, he had not known which. Inches from his face on the dirty mattress was another face, and Medlo recoiled from it as from any unexpected presence which intruded upon half sleep. The dream had been more present than the reality. The face did not connect to a name – or perhaps it did. A hostler, as Medlo was. Hired here in Das to accompany the wagon train west into the desert lands. Young. What was his name? Alan something or other. From somewhere. Medlo rose, gagging, and staggered away down the twisting corridor to the convenience office which jutted out over die midden.

  There was a mirror there, blotched and leprous, throwing back a diseased reflection of truth. Medlo found himself staring at the image, remembering the night past. He had told Alan that he was from – where? Zales? Why? Why not Rhees? Rhees. Well, why not Rhees? Because he had not wanted the boy to know he was from Rhees, or anyone to know, or himself to remember.

  He looked upon himself with loathing. He was a kernel of hating fury locked inside an iron box, that box in a shut room in a stone house, and that house walled around with unthink and unfeel. A shrubbery of habit shrouded those walls until he, himself, Medlo, forgot there was anything there. Motherhate was there, but he did not want to look at that. He knew well enough what loathsome things were there, not to be looked at, or thought of, or to come into the light of day. Unthink and unfeel were easy among the wagoneers. Drunkenness was easy, too, and the slow death easier than the quick, for it needed no decision. Why then, at this
moment, did something of the old Medlo, Rhees scion, prideful and aching, leak out of his bleary eyes to see himself and sicken at what it saw?

  He was filthy, and hairy, and he stank like the midden below him. He was caught up in half-drunken melancholy and began to weep, then to vomit, then to curse, then to weep once more. When he had done enough of that, he began to wash himself.

  When he woke the young hostler some hours later, he was shaking, but clean. Throughout that day, he spoke often to himself, saying that he must eat and mend clothing and get new boots. Such was the way he spoke that he might have been speaking to Alan, and so Alan thought he did. If Alan thought it odd that Medlo never asked what Alan thought, or what Alan wanted, he did not say so. Instead, almost gratefully, he ate, and mended clothing, and saw to his own boots. Medlo was so concentrated upon his own salvation that he did not note this strangeness.

  That first day set the pattern of their life together. Medlo said, to Medlo, what Medlo needed to hear, Alan heard, and attended as though he had been Medlo’s shadow. So, Medlo told himself to take up his jangle and play, and Alan watched, learned, played a little. So Medlo told himself, sternly, not to drink the poisonous wine which the train carried as trade goods, and Alan listened and did not drink. So Medlo grew sad at certain dusk hours when the sun fell through light haze which smelt like the lawns and meadows of Rhees, and Alan grew sad with him, reminded of – what? Medlo never asked.

  So they travelled, sometimes as hostlers, sometimes as musicians, sometimes as unnamed supernumeraries hired to swell the apparent fighting strength of caravans. If Medlo had been asked when it was that they became lovers, he would not have known what to say. It was not as though he loved someone else, but only as though he, himself, had been replicated in order to comfort himself. Usually he did not even refer to Alan by name, did not say ‘you,’ said only ‘we.’ ‘We leave for the coast tomorrow,’ or ‘They paid us not too badly for the trip.’

  If anyone had known him well enough to do so, that person might have pointed out to Medlo that he felt no onger lonely, no longer violated, no longer alone. And Alan? He went where Medlo went, a companion almost without identity of his own, growing to look more like Medlo with each day in walk and wince and moue and cock of the head, spying little, smiling much.

  And yet, Alan said, once, ‘See how the skirts of the sky are stained with wine’ Thereafter, each time that Medlo looked at the evening sky, he thought of the wine-stained skirts but forgot it was Alan who had said it. Alan said once, ‘The skin of a woman is cool, like a forest leaf. The skin of a man is hot, like a desert leaf.’ And Medlo thought of that, forgetting why.

  In time they, who had been two shoddy manikins selling themselves for a few coins to caravan masters, became two persons, strong and wiry, taller than average, slim, with air and beard trimmed neatly, clean and alert, wise to the ways of the trail and the town, needing only – themselves. Many thought them brothers. What they thought, what Medlo thought, he himself did not know.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THEWSON

  Year 1165

  It was said in the Lion Courts that he who sat in the Chair of the Chieftains of the People was crowned with wisdom and armed with the strength of hundreds. The Chair was padded with the skins of great spotted cats and surrounded with the tusks of jungle pigs to show the strength that was the Chieftain’s right. To the sides of the Chair stood warriors who had Killed-The-Great-Beast holding fans made of the feathers of hawks and the hides of spotted dogs, symbols of far-seeing and tenacity. Snake-skins bound the legs of the Chair to bring to mind that which strikes without warning, and the horns of antelopes reminded the warriors of the value of swiftness. The hide of a sphinx lay before the Chieftain, the delicate skin of the breast worn into tatters where it had been scuffed by the knees and elbows of crawling petitioners. The Chieftain had said more than once that it might be time to go into the far deserts on a sphinx hunt, into those places where the basilisks hid in the twisted stone of the hotlands. Such a hunt had not been held since his grandfather’s time, and the skin was wearing away, no longer occasioning the awe it onetime had.

  The Chieftain never made up his mind to have the hunt, however, and he died peacefully one night still considering the matter. There were three possible candidates for the Chieftain’s Chair, and there was the mandatory Year-Without-A-Leader to come, during which the candidates would be considered. One was a warrior so great that his like had not been known for generations, one who had taken the heads of enemies before he was twenty, Killed-The-Great-Beast at the age of fifteen, who had brought the Chieftain the shields and cattle of countless successful raids upon neighbouring peoples. One was the younger brother of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried, a man of great skill in the making of things, whose arrows were straighter than those made by others, whose shields and fetishes glowed with life and spirit, whose boats skimmed the water with a life and will of their own. The third candidate was the son of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried, that is, the only son who was left. All the others had so demonstrated their courage and competed in dangerous games of skill that they had come to early and lamented ends. The surviving son had been begotten by the Chieftain in the Chieftain’s eightieth year and had been named ‘Son of my Strength,’ that is, ‘Thewson.’ He was tall enough and well built enough that the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried need have had no shame about him, but he was young and callow enough that none of the members of the Council of Elders considered him seriously as a candidate for the Chair of Chieftains once the Year-Without-A-Leader was past.

  Why Thewson should have supposed himself a true contender for the Chair was not generally understood. It may have been that he had been weaned on the vaunting ambition of his mother, who had little enough pleasure in life and wished to believe that she might be remembered as a Womb-of-Chieftains though no female could be given that title until after her death. It may have been simply that he lived in dreams, that the violent endings to which all his brothers had come might have seemed ordained in order that Thewson might rise as they fell. Whatever the reason, when he learned that the Council did not consider him a true contender, he raged silently in his hide tent for some days. He was not a stupid young man. He knew that he could not challenge either the warrior or the craftsman. He went, therefore, to the house of the shaman and begged the shaman to tell him of the history of the Chair of Chieftains and of those who had occupied the Chair over the years and of how they had come there.

  The shaman sat crouched over his fire, fingering the bones of fortune, casting herbs into the fire and inhaling the pungent smoke, muttering occasionally as he chanted the stories of thirty generations of Chieftains. All of the histories were taught by shaman to pupil – there was no writing. Thewson found that his memory was as quick and accurate as the strike of a great viper. He had only to hear the histories once to remember them.

  Time on time, it was sung, once every ten generations or so, the Chieftain of the People came to power through the Crown of Wisdom. Thewson brewed a large pot of beer, strained it and flavoured it with berries to pour it generously for the shaman. Tell me, Old and Wise, what is the Crown of Wisdom?’ The shaman muttered and rolled his watery eyes, bleared from one hundred years of smoky fires.

  ‘In the sacred place,’ he chanted, ‘where the river Wal Thai spills from the high lake over the great cliffs, where the coloured ribbon of the light of Ulum Auwa spins across the great gulf, where there is speaking thunder of waters, there is the cavern of the Knowledge of All Things. There in that cavern is the image of Ulum Auwa, carved from the Rock That Lives, and on the carven head of He Auwamol was the Crown of Wisdom. It was to this place that the Killers of Great Beasts came, and it was to this place that they set themselves to pass the great gulf and the speaking thunder and to climb die Wall Which Cannot Be Climbed to come to the Cavern of Ulum Auwa.’

  There was much detail. All of the Killers of the Great Beast failed to reach the cavern, all but one. That one was Chieftain-Climbs-The-Wall who
was the many times great-grandfather of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried. Chieftain-Climbs-The-Wall had returned to the Lion Courts with the Crown.

  ‘What happened to the Crown? asked Thewson, softly, as he poured more beer.

  ‘In the days that the Chieftain-Climbs-The-Wall became the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried and lay in his bones in his house, there came a stranger with many strangers in a great boat to the place of Crossing the Waters, where Wal Thal flows into the sea. There was much fighting and much glory with the stranger, and he went away scatheless though he and many of the other strangers left their weapons and their armour and many wet the earth with their blood and many left their bones as well. And when the stranger had gone, it was found that the Crown of Wisdom was gone as well, for there had been fighting in the place where that Chieftain lay in his bones. No Chieftain since that time has had the crown, and it is said that the Cavern of Ulum Auwa is empty of it.’

  ‘Is it sung that the stranger took it?’

  ‘It is sung that when the stranger went, the crown went, though whether Auwamol stretched out his hand to take it or the stranger took it is not sung.’ The shaman belched deeply and lovingly. ‘By the Tree of Forever, Thewson, you make good beer.’

  There was still almost all the Year-Without-A-Leader before any decision about the Chair of Chieftains would be made. Thewson decided that there was a remote chance he could find the Crown of Wisdom in that time, or kill himself trying, or find somewhere else in the world which would be more appealing than the Lion Courts would be if ruled by someone else. He decided to have a try at the great falls first, and if he survived that but did not find the Crown he would go to the place of Crossing the Waters and take the first ship heading anywhere. He had carved ivory and gold beads to pay his way. Custom dictated that he go empty-handed except for the tall spear bearing his own basilisk-skin banner and a money pouch and a cloak of skins. That is the way that he went.